If David Bret ever wants to be taken seriously as a biographer he has got to do better than simply cutting and pasting Irving Shulman's Harlow : An Intimate Biography (1964)into an even more lurid tale of sex,sex and um even more sex.Virtually all the stories in Shulman's book have been discredited many times over by biographers who have more of a penchant for carrying out some research than Bret obviously has.

All the old stereotypes are trotted out as if new; Jean is portrayed as a foul mouthed slut,her mother a megalomaniac religious zealot,Paul Bern as the impotent wife beater whose violence caused Jean's fatal kidney disease and Marino Bello as the sexually abusive step father. And so it goes on.

Every character in the story is introduced by way of a sexual profile and this is the main weakness of the book. In Tarnished Angel everyone is defined by their sexuality as if anything they might have achieved outside of the bedroom is an irrelevance.Thus Bret achieves the not inconsiderable feat of making Harlow's story a bland, one dimensional narrative. No attempt is made to discover the woman behind the star.

Add to this spelling mistakes, typos, grammatical errors and any number of dreamt up events that never happened and you have a monumental mess on your hands.This is a fast food biography for the fast food generation, a Mc biography if you like.You will find nothing new about Jean Harlow in this book.Bret couldn't be bothered to give the subject the respect she deserves so why should you be bothered to buy it ? Avoid at all costs.

David Bret,it seems,is incapable of doing his own research--this would not matter so much if he relied on the work done by accepted experts--of which Irving Shulman is not one. His cries of wounded pride at negative reviews are more entertaining than anything in his sloppy books.

1.0 out of 5 stars

very poor, spend more time on writing and less on the cover, 25 Feb 2011By G. Stevens "filmfiend" (london, england) (REAL NAME)

I wonder why this author feels compelled to write a biography on Jean Harlow. There is no feeling for the subject, positive or negative. I mean really, where on earth does he qualify ' flashing her pubic hair to the film crew'. Nonsense like this has been repeated for years and I would expect a new biography to have far more substance. Really, really dissapointing. Save your money and look for 'Platinum Girl' instead.